Contact and Connection: Travel and Mobility Studies Symposium, 27th June

On Thursday 27th June 2013, the Travel and Mobility Studies Research Network is holding its first symposium on the theme of “Contact and Connections”. We are delighted that keynote presentations will be given by Dr Cathy Waters (University of Kent) and Professor Tim Youngs (Nottingham Trent University), and invite submissions for papers as per the cfp below.

***

Submissions are invited for the first annual symposium of the University of Warwick Travel and Mobility Studies Research Network, on the theme of “Contact and Connections”.

The symposium aims to address the various connections and forms of contact produced through different forms and representations of travel practice. How does travel connect cultures? What new cultural formations are produced through the process of travel? What are the implications of connection across local, national and global mobile networks? How does travel connect people to the spaces around them and through which they move? What new theoretical connections are produced through the intersections of travel and mobility theory with other disciplines?

Proposals are welcome from researchers working across the arts, humanities and social sciences, including such subjects as travel literature (fiction and non-fiction), the visual arts, tourism studies, migration and migrants, commodity circulation, transnationality, philosophies of travel, and mobility theory in any historical period and within any global context.

Topics might include:

– Cultural connections forged through travel

– Contact zones in colonial contexts

– Intra-national and local networks of mobility

– Global networks and transnationality

– Connections within and between literature, visual arts, and other cultural modes

– Circulation of people, commodities, texts

– Connections between people and places

– Theoretical connections within travel studies

– Touristic connections with spaces of travel

– Meeting points and places of contact

Please send abstracts of 300 words for a 15-20 minute paper by 26th April 2013; acceptance will be confirmed by 3rd May.